We tend to use brainworms as a bad word, but a hidden Baldur’s Gate 3 skill tree actually gives you the good kind – sort of. Like a lot of things in Larian’s upcoming RPG, “good” depends on your perspective and how willing you are to make the people around you very angry with your burgeoning mind flayer abilities.
Larian outlined these mind flayer skills in a new PlayStation Blog post and touched on a lingering question from the PC game’s early access version, namely, what happens if you use your psionic abilities too often? The answer is pretty much what you’d expect: You eventually turn into a brain octopus yourself, or something resembling one.
The process apparently involves a mix of picking the Ilithid option when it comes up during conversations and finding and consuming worms that you pluck from jars and skulls scattered around Faerun. Taking this path unlocks new powers that let you manipulate people and objects in and out of battle, but as you might expect, the allies around you won’t take kindly to your action.
Like the mind flayers themselves, you’ll gain substantial powers at the cost of pushing everyone around you away. There’s likely a good balance you can strike that gives the best of both worlds, though – a smattering of powerful Ilithid skills and at least a few friends still willing to stay by your side.
Larian didn’t say whether mind flayer is one of Baldur’s Gate 3’s subclasses, so it sounds like you can access this skill tree regardless of which character you choose or how you build them.
Baldur’s Gate 3 launches on Aug. 3, 2023, for PC and a bit later for PS5 – Sep. 6, 2023.
Written by Josh Broadwell on behalf of GLHF
